RAMSES: TIME FOR UPSCALING!

AFTER MANY ADVANTURES SHARED DURING THE RECENT YEARS WITH OUR PARTNERS ZSW, ICMCB AND HOPPECKE, WE WILL GO FOR UPSCALING OF OUR RECHARGEABLE ZNMNO2 BATTERY TECHNOLOGY. FINGERS CROSSED FOR RAMSES!

RAMSES project bringing the partners together from both sides of the Rhine proposes to setup the basis for an innovative European-based practical solution, by aiming at demonstrating that a rechargeable alkaline zinc – manganese dioxide battery technology, being made of abundant, environmentally friendly, intrinsically safe and robust materials, without issues for recycling step and presenting auspicious life cycle costs, could be more advantageous than state-of-the-art Li-ions batteries for the stationary electricity storage.

RAMSES has as objective, to demonstrate, with the construction of a prototype, that such battery will fulfil requirements in terms of load profiles and costs for the energy storage from residential and grid photovoltaic production.

Alkaline Zn-MnO2 technology is one of the oldest battery chemistries applied for commercial primary batteries and is still produced nowadays in large quantities with high specific energy (130 Wh∙kg-1 and 400 Wh·dm-3). The electrochemical processes hindering the cycling of such battery chemistry are, for the anodic side, the formation of Zn dendrites promoting detrimental short circuits and on the cathodic side, formation of soluble and inactive phases. Using Sunergy’s Zn anode, one of the best Zn anode technologies in the world, the partners have focused on the development of innovative high performance cathodes.

Following the highly encouraging and successful results obtained by the partners on small scale cells until now, RAMSES will enter its final phase: upscaling. Three different demonstrators will be built, based on three different cathode materials. The demonstrators will go up to 15Ah and 6V. The success of these demonstrators will let for continuation of our collaboration around the highly sustainable ZnMnO2 technology in the coming years, towards its industrialisation. Fingers crossed for RAMSES!